School systems across the country are still working through the academic and well-being impacts of COVID-19. In Washington state, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) created the Academic and Student Well-Being Recovery Plan: Planning Guide (2021) to help districts, tribal compact schools, and charter schools build a structured, equity-centered plan—and to meet requirements tied to federal relief funding.
For school leaders, the document can feel dense. But its core message is straightforward: recovery planning should be intentional, data-informed, and rooted in equity—while also being practical enough to implement, monitor, and improve over time.
At TinyEYE, we partner with schools to deliver online therapy services that support student well-being and access. In this post, we’ll translate key takeaways from OSPI’s guide into an easy-to-use framework schools can apply when strengthening academic recovery and student support systems.
Why the Recovery Plan Matters: It’s Not Just a “Nice to Have”
OSPI’s Planning Guide is designed to support local education agencies (LEAs) in responding to both federal and state requirements connected to Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) III funding.
Federal requirement: LEAs receiving ARP ESSER funds must publish a “Safe Return to In-Person Instruction and Continuity of Services Plan,” and seek public comment before posting.
Washington state requirement: House Bill 1368 (2021) requires an Academic and Student Well-Being Recovery Plan addressing needs resulting from building closures and extended remote learning.
In other words, the plan is both a compliance requirement and a strategic opportunity: it creates a structure for identifying gaps, prioritizing supports, and showing progress over time.
Start With OSPI’s North Star: Equity and the Whole Child
OSPI anchors the guide in a clear vision and set of values:
Vision: All students prepared for postsecondary pathways, careers, and civic engagement.
Mission: Transform K–12 education to close opportunity gaps and set high expectations for all students and educators.
Values: Ensuring equity, collaboration and service, continuous improvement, and a focus on the whole child.
The guide emphasizes that equity goes beyond equality. It requires schools to examine how policies and practices can produce different outcomes for student groups—including students of color, students living in poverty, students receiving special education services, English Learners, students who identify as LGBTQ+, and highly mobile students.
For planning teams, this means a recovery plan shouldn’t only ask “What do students need?” It should also ask: “Which students are furthest from educational justice in our system, and what barriers are we responsible for removing?”
What LEAs Must Address: The Core Building Blocks
OSPI’s template requires LEAs to address several key elements. While the full template is detailed, the major building blocks can be summarized as:
Diagnostic assessments: Identify the academic and well-being diagnostic tools used by grade level, and how frequently they’re administered.
Gap identification: Use assessment results and other data to identify learning and well-being gaps.
Student groups: Include data and planning considerations for specific student groups, including (among others) Students with Disabilities, English Learners, students experiencing homelessness, and students in foster care.
Supports and opportunities: Provide additional instruction, well-being supports, and extracurricular opportunities based on assessed needs.
Equity analysis: Use an equity analysis tool (required), document it, and link to it.
Public process: School board approval and public posting on the LEA website, with disability and language accessibility.
This structure matters because it pushes planning beyond general intentions and into operational clarity: what tools, what data, what student groups, what supports, and how you’ll know whether it’s working.
Three Phases + Continuous Improvement: Plan for Learning, Not Perfection
One of the most practical parts of OSPI’s approach is the emphasis on iteration. The recovery plan is designed to be submitted and improved across three phases:
Phase 1 (June 2021): Initial strategies for summer and early fall.
Phase 2 (November 2021): Review data from Phase 1, adjust strategies, and plan longer-term supports for winter and the school year.
Phase 3 (April 2022): Continue the improvement cycle and plan for sustained, longer-term changes (2022–23+).
Underneath these phases is a continuous improvement engine: the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycle.
Plan: Set objectives, predictions, roles, timelines, and data collection methods.
Do: Implement and document what happens.
Study: Analyze results and compare them to expectations.
Act: Decide what to adopt, adapt, or abandon—and begin the next cycle.
For busy school teams, this is a helpful permission structure: you don’t need a perfect plan on day one. You need a plan that is measurable, equitable, and designed to improve.
Key Themes Schools Can Use as a Planning Checklist
OSPI highlights six themes that can serve as a planning checklist. Here’s what they mean in practice.
1) Student Well-Being
OSPI is explicit: learning cannot take place unless we attend to students’ overall well-being. Well-being includes social-emotional learning (SEL) and mental health, including the effects of trauma, anxiety, and depression.
Practical strategies referenced in the guide include:
Culturally responsive and anti-racist practices
Relationship-building structures (advisories, looping, small mentored groups)
Family partnerships and inclusive environments
Ensuring students with disabilities have opportunities to interact with peers while receiving supports
This is an area where online therapy services can expand capacity—especially when schools are facing staffing shortages or need to improve access across multiple buildings.
2) Student and Family Voice
OSPI emphasizes that families gained new insights during remote learning, and students have clear perspectives on what motivates them and what is challenging. The guide encourages LEAs to move along a continuum from limited involvement toward authentic partnership.
Involvement: one-way communication
Engagement: two-way communication and some shared decision-making
Partnership: continuous, reciprocal decision-making roles
Practical approaches include surveys, interviews, virtual conferencing, language access planning (including ASL and home languages), and advisory systems—especially in middle and high school—so every student has an advocate.
3) Professional Learning
Recovery plans often fail when staff don’t have the training, time, and feedback loops to implement new practices. OSPI frames professional learning as sustained, job-embedded, and collaborative—aligned to student needs and improvement goals.
Key focus areas referenced include:
SEL and trauma-informed practices
Racial literacy, cultural responsiveness, and stereotype threat
Collaborative learning cycles that include reflection on student work and outcomes
4) Recovery and Acceleration (Not Remediation)
OSPI highlights a critical shift: acceleration means helping students access grade-level learning by diagnosing and addressing prerequisite skills—without tracking students into lower expectations.
Acceleration can happen:
Before, during, or after school
On weekends
During breaks or summer
Through expanded learning time or balanced calendars
The guide also encourages planning for transitions (between grades, schools, and instructional models) in culturally responsive ways, with student and family engagement.
5) Diagnostic Assessments (Academic + Well-Being)
OSPI’s plan requires LEAs to name the diagnostic tools used and how often they’re administered. Importantly, the guide frames diagnostics as a way to understand strengths and needs—not to label or punish.
OSPI provides examples of commonly used tools (for informational purposes), spanning academics and well-being. The key operational takeaway is to ensure:
Staff are trained to administer and interpret results
Data is used to inform instruction and supports
Assessment use is asset-based and culturally responsive
Multiple measures are used rather than relying on a single tool
6) Community Partnerships
OSPI encourages LEAs to strengthen community partnerships through asset mapping and shared planning. Community organizations can help expand enriched learning time, provide integrated student supports, and serve as cultural brokers and liaisons.
For many districts, partnerships are also how recovery becomes sustainable—especially when school-based teams are stretched thin.
Turning the Guide Into Action: A Practical “Next 30 Days” List
If your district is revisiting or strengthening recovery planning now, here’s a simple way to translate OSPI’s guidance into near-term action:
Confirm your equity analysis tool and document how it is used in decision-making.
Inventory diagnostic assessments (academic and well-being), by grade band, including frequency and staff capacity.
Identify priority student groups using disaggregated data and community input.
Define universal vs. strategic supports so everyone understands what is available to all students and what is targeted.
Set a PDSA cadence (for example, every 6–12 weeks) with clear owners, measures, and decision rules.
Plan for accessibility in public posting: disability access and language access are not optional add-ons.
Strengthen your student support capacity by identifying where staffing gaps exist and which services can be delivered through partners.
How TinyEYE Supports School Recovery Goals
OSPI’s guide repeatedly reinforces that student well-being and access to supports are foundational to learning. TinyEYE’s online therapy services can help schools operationalize that goal by expanding access to qualified providers, supporting continuity of services, and helping districts reach students across buildings—especially when in-person staffing is limited.
When districts are building recovery plans around equity, continuous improvement, and whole-child supports, the question often becomes: “How do we deliver services reliably, at scale, and in a way that fits school schedules?” That’s where teletherapy can be a practical part of the solution.
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